Attendance is where their money comes from. Taking roll is what counts.

A bell rings. The big metal door flies open, and hallway sounds of boisterous chitter-chatter rush into the empty classroom like lake water breaching an ill-built dam. Now comes a paddling of young humans, averaging ...

Upon my return from Boston, where I attend college, and dizzy with the prospects of home, the customary pile of mail one expects after a long sojourn greeted me. Two thin off-white envelopes lay within ...

"Coffee, please," I say and hold back on snapping my fingers and yelling, "Quick! Quick! Move! Move!" She understands the unspoken commands and slides a clear, textured glass of ice water in front of me. ...

Envy: A Novel by Kathryn Harrison. Random House, 2005; $24.95; 301 pages FROM THE DUST JACKET: Will, a Brooklyn psychoanalyst and almost-identical twin, has a good sex life-with the woman he married. So why then ...

Jewel has decided not to release a book of love poems she calls "too steamy, too private" for publication. In a message posted at www.jeweljk.com, the 31-year-old explains, "They're too explicit...when I wrote these poems, ...

"Rampant Liver-Defying Consumption" is promised at Rocket From The Crypt's final show on Halloween. "After 16 years of scars and ear damage all in the name of spreading goodwill and the Rock N Roll doctrine," ...

Candye Kane won't be doing lap dances at Tio Leo's tomorrow night; she'll be singing with her blues band. However, members of the Fat Bottom Girls will shake their booties during the ten-woman burlesque troupe's ...

Twenty years ago, concert promoter Bill Silva predicted that there would eventually be two concert markets in San Diego County: North County and metro San Diego. In other words, the same artist could play both ...

Clear Channel Entertainment holds exclusive rights to book the Sports Arena. Sources say the agreement won't be renewed when it expires in December. As the largest concert company in the U.S., Clear Channel Entertainment dominates ...

One of Hot Snakes' final recordings is featured on Activision's video game soundtrack to Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. They do a cover of Government Issue's "Time to Escape." Saves the Day, Thrice, My Chemical Romance, ...

In early September 2001, Carol Eklund went to Paris for a fashion show. She was looking for new lines to offer sales representatives of a wholesale business she had started two years earlier. Her return ...

Last Sunday morning, August 28, at about 7 a.m., I left my apartment on St. Charles Avenue to evacuate New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina closed in. The night before, my parents had plans to "vertically ...

With the city's finances in tatters, the Union-Tribune has lately been talking up the idea of raising taxes. In a lengthy front-page story a week ago Sunday, headlined "America's cheapest city," the newspaper set forth ...

When the fall quarter began in 1972, I vowed to make no new friends at school. I was a third-year graduate student in literature at U.C. Irvine. I was finishing coursework and would take qualifying ...

It looks as if you're cradling a baby goat in your arms while something explodes from its backside. Right wrist rests atop left elbow. Right elbow rests atop left wrist. Right pinky and index finger ...

Authentic Afghan cuisine is hard to find. For several years, Chopahn restaurant was an overlooked storefront in a huge mall up near UTC. "When we were in the Renaissance Towne Center, people often drove right ...

What a brown land, I thought, peering out of a late-'80s station wagon, at the chaparral-covered mountains looming over the Santa Clarita Valley. I was headed to a Great Books college, Thomas Aquinas, tucked away ...

First day of kindergarten, newly arrived in Boston, newly separated from my best friend (and neighbor) Andy, doing the standard weeping thing, even though I had attended preschool back in upstate New York and loved ...